


Installation

by Philipa_Moss



Category: Angels in America
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:New Year Resolutions 2009, recipient:ViolaCoye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper starts her new life, post-play/film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Installation

  


  
  
  
  
  


  
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## Installation

 

Fandom: [Angels in America](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Angels%20in%20America)

 

Written for: ViolaCoye in the New Year Resolutions 2009 Challenge

by [Philipa Moss](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=86/installation)

I bought a book about the ozone in City Lights Bookstore. I read it while sitting in   
the cemetery of that church Kim Novak visits in Vertigo. Not the mission, the other one.   
And while I read the book I realized that I was sitting with, rubbing up against, all these   
dead people. I could feel them pushing in on me like rush hour on the subway. I think. I   
never really took the subway that much, but I know how it can be. Here I take the cable   
cars. Trolleys. I'm never sure which is the tourist word and which is the word the locals   
use. I haven't been living here long enough for that, although I've been living here longer   
than I lived in New York. Much longer.

It was when I first arrived here that I bought the book about the ozone and sat in   
the cemetery to read it. At first it made me more nervous, almost unbearably nervous. It   
felt as if every inch of my skin was about the peel off the bone in long flakes, like peeling   
an orange. It felt as if I would turn pink in an instant, then red, then crumble to dust. I   
couldn't breath for a while. Then I could, and my skin didn't feel like it was burning, and   
I could close the book and sit there and breathe in and out in and out and then I could   
open the book and keep writing. That's when I felt the dead gathered around me, reading   
over my shoulder, but that didn't make me nervous.

Mr. Lies never showed up again after I flushed the last of the pills, the ones I had   
zipped into the inside pocket of my coat, in LaGuardia before I got on the plane to come   
here. I haven't missed him at all, except for that one moment in the cemetery with all the   
dead. It was in that moment and that moment only that I really and truly missed him.

I tried to call Joe twice right after I got back to my motel. (I hadn't found my   
apartment, or my job, yet). Both times I failed. The first time I failed to pick up the phone   
at all. Instead I lay on the bed and counted the stains on the ceiling and sweated and tried   
not to vomit. The second time I picked up the phone and dialed our number---his number-  
\--in New York but he didn't answer. Not at all. So I hung up.

Although I've still never called him, Joe has called me twice since I moved here.   
The first time was two months after I left him, and I had just gotten my apartment and my   
first job at the pet store (which didn't last long because I found out I'm allergic). I was   
making spaghetti and the phone rang and when I first answered it I thought it was a crank   
caller because there was just someone breathing on the other end. And that scared me   
because even though I had had my neighbors check my locks to make sure they're secure   
enough, I still worried about crazy people with knives in the night. I couldn't help it. You   
don't shake that kind of fear right away, at least I don't.

Then Joe spoke. He said, "Harper. Buddy. Are you there?" And I said, "Yes," and   
he started crying and we stayed that way for a while: me breathing and him crying, and   
then we talked some more. I don't remember, really, what we said. It wasn't that happy   
and already at that point I had decided that my life here would be happier, so I doubt I   
made any effort to remember what we said. I do remember that Joe said he would call me   
back soon and that he didn't call me back for two years.

This time it was Thanksgiving and I had my friends Sonia, Henry, James, and   
Stefan over for dinner. I didn't cook. Sonia did. We were sitting around in the living   
room going crazy because the turkey was starting to smell really good in the kitchen and   
Stefan was trying to distract us by telling a story about the Act Up rally he went to where   
some old woman was running around naked and no one could really figure out what she   
was trying to say by doing this. That's when Joe called. I left everyone sitting there and   
went into the kitchen to answer the phone and again he just breathed for a while, but this   
time I knew it was him, I knew in my bones, so I spoke first and I said, "Joe? Happy   
Thanksgiving."

"Harper," he said. "You too."

"I wish you could smell this turkey through the phone," I said. "I wish you could.   
It's the best smell in the world."

"I bet," he said. "Harper?" he said.

"Yes?"

"How are you?"

"I'm making Thanksgiving dinner with friends," I said. "Well, I'm eating it with   
friends. I didn't make anything but the mashed potatoes. Even sober it turns out I'm a   
lousy cook."

He laughed a little, I think. "That's too bad." Then things got muffled. I think he   
put his hand over the receiver to answer something someone else on his end had said. For   
a moment I thought I heard another voice, a man's voice, then Joe was back. "Sorry.   
What did you say?"

"Nothing. What are you doing? Did you make the cranberry sauce?"

"Yes," he said, "but it came out lumpy. It's the first time I've made it since---" He   
stopped all of a sudden.

Since I left. "How is your mother?" I asked. "Is she still there?"

"I don't---I---I think," he finished. "I mean, yes, she is. She's getting used to it.   
We don't see each other a lot. We have different friends," he said.

Sonia came into the kitchen and turned on the light in the oven, peering in.   
"Harper," she said, "get off the phone. It's chow time."

"I heard that," said Joe. "I'll let you go."

"Happy Thanksgiving," I said.

"Same to you," said Joe. I held the phone to my ear as he hung up. Before he   
dropped the phone back onto its cradle I heard the voice in the background again. "I'm   
starving, hon," it said. Then the line went dead.

I stood like that for a while; pretending Joe was still on the line. My throat ached.   
I wished I had told him that I went to rallies and protests and things like that. I wished I   
had told him that I understood now, that I was glad that we were living our lives apart   
and living them fully.

Another thing I wanted to tell Joe was that I never remembered my dreams   
anymore. Not a single one. That was still true that Thanksgiving, and it was true for a   
year or so more. The first dream I had after leaving New York was in January of 1990.   
Earlier that day, the day of the dream, I was walking across the Golden Gate Bridge with   
Sonia, exercising, because she thinks that's important and I think being friends with her is   
important so I go along. We stopped halfway across and looked out over the bay and all   
of a sudden I got this whiff of the city and the water that brought tears to my eyes. I felt a   
tightness in my chest that was almost like the old tightness, the one I felt last in the   
cemetery of the church that Kim Novak visits in Vertigo. I thought for a moment that the   
nervousness was back and I wanted to cry because I was so happy and that was so sad.   
But then the tightness was gone and I realized it hadn't been the same tightness after all. I   
started to cry, and had to explain to Sonia that I was happy, and not sad, but that I didn't   
know why this was happening all of a sudden. It was more than a whiff of the city and the   
bay. It was a whiff of something beyond both of them.

That night I had my dream. I was walking through a museum like the museum in   
Vertigo, but every painting on the wall had someone smiling in it. I sat down in from of   
one of them to take a closer look when a man sat down beside me and said, "Oh fuck, it's   
you again."

He looked familiar, but different. He rolled his eyes. "What is it this time?"

"I've seen you before," I said. I reached out to touch his face.

He leaned sharply backward, out of the way. "None of that," he said. "I've had   
about as many revelations as I can handle."

I realized where I had seen him before. "You're not wearing any makeup!" I   
exclaimed.

"Observant," he said. "I've got one for you too: You're happier now."

"Where are you?" I asked. "Where are you really?"

"At home," he said, "in bed, with the covers tucked up to my chin."

"Is anyone in bed with you?" I asked.

He pretended to look shocked, crossing his hands over his chest and his legs one   
over the other. Then he grinned and winked. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Are you happy?"

"You already know the answer," he said. Then, "Yes," he said. "I'm alive, aren't   
I?"

"You're alive?" I said, "I'm so glad. I was worried." I hadn't been, or at least I   
didn't think I had been, but I found after I said it that it felt like the truth. I looked at the   
paintings around us. They got smaller and lined up so that we could look at lots of them   
at a time. "They're all happy," I said, pointing at some of the closer ones. "Who are   
they?"

"The dead," he said. "Didn't you know? The happy ones, at least. You met them   
before. In the cemetery." He stood up. "Come on. I'll show you their best installation."

We walked for what seemed like hours through galleries filled with smiling faces.   
Some were paintings, oil on canvas, or watercolors. Some were drawings with charcoal   
or pen. Then these turned into black and white photographs as we walked, and then the   
black and white photos turned into color ones. "I'm not going to see myself, am I?" I   
asked, suddenly afraid.

"No," he said. "Do I look like the grim reaper?"

"No," I said. "You look like a New Yorker. I miss it, sometimes. The coolness,   
the dark earth tones, the nice glasses frames."

He beamed.

We stopped in front of a frame covered in a sheet. "Pull it off," he said.

"I don't want to," I said. "I don't want to know who it is."

For the first time, he touched me. He took my elbow. Gently, he ran his hand up   
my arm and rested it on my shoulder. His other hand came up to my other shoulder. "It's   
all right," he said. "You already know who it is."

I sighed. I closed my eyes. I squeezed his hands, then lifted them from my   
shoulders and let them drop to his sides. "So long as he's happy," I said, took a corner of   
the sheet, and pulled.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have dreamt since then, but about ordinary things, like being late to the dentist,   
or misplacing something and looking everywhere, or suddenly being naked and back in   
junior high.

Yesterday I went back to the cemetery. This time I brought a novel and I sat there   
and finished it. The sun didn't burn me to a crisp and the ghosts didn't crowd in, trying to   
read over my shoulder. I only put my book down once. I stuck my bookmark in it and I   
stood up and I shut my eyes. "Joe?" I said. There was no answer.

But when I sat back down I think I felt something. Or maybe I smelled something.   
There was a whiff of the bay. There was no sign of Mr. Lies. There had been no sign of   
him in years. So I opened my book and kept reading, and let the San Francisco sun watch   
over me instead.

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